


i’m hoping at the gates, they’ll tell me you’re mine

by babykanima



Series: the devil you know [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, demon!Derek, reaper!stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 13:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2695529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykanima/pseuds/babykanima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You've heard the story, right? Free will in the hands of angels does something to them. They start acting vicious and jealous, start thinking less about God's will and more about their own wants.</p><p>They start acting like humans.</p><p>That's the first hint he gets. He wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i’m hoping at the gates, they’ll tell me you’re mine

**Author's Note:**

> so this sequel is a teensy bit darker and sadly, also a teensy bit shorter. full warnings in the end notes so read those if you think you might need to. take care of yourselves, okay?

“Help me.” She says. “Oh _Allah_ , help me.”

There's a girl in the middle of a crowded city and in the middle of a crowded house and she's going to die alone. He hates when they're alone.

She's locked herself in the tiny bathroom she's shared with her too-big family for thirteen years and she might be crying out to the wrong name but Death is very, very old. Death is older than even the Heavenly Father and so Stiles is here.

He lies down next to her, in the space between the tiny bathtub and the door and wishes he could tell her it'll be okay but until she uses that shard of glass in her hand he's invisible to her.

She's dressed like she's about to be getting married to a man three times her age but he knows that won't happen. Not if he's here.

Stiles wants to close his eyes to this and not for the first time, his hands ache to hold her. He can't help but let them hover over her tiny body, a tight feeling in the back of his throat at the sight of her distraught face and hand-sewn wedding dress. He feels so large next to her and this? This is the thing he hates the most. God created the world to be so beautiful, but then the people came and everything turned ugly.

“Oh, _Allah_.” She says again and this time her voice doesn't shake as much. She sounds strong. She sounds the strongest she's probably ever sounded. “Forgive me.”

The glass slices through her papery skin like it's made of air.

* * *

See, the thing is, regardless of what the book likes to say; all angels are basically made of the same things. They all have the same power, the same gender (i.e. the non-binary kind, though a lot of them eventually begin to identify one way or another—Stiles himself had been a 'herself' for a while in the fifteen hundreds), the same devotion to a being they've never had a single conversation with.

You don't get to choose what you're going to do with your eternal life if you're an angel.

There's the cupids, and Tech Support (who control which prayers get answers and which get ignored and shared around the water cooler for a laugh), the guardian angels, and the ones who look after the flora and fauna. Everybody has a job at their creation and there are too many angels to count, all with names and all his brothers and sisters and he loves them, he does, but.

He spends most of his time with the reapers, with Lydia and Isaac and Parrish and maybe he wants to bring a soul _into_ the world for once. Maybe he wants to show up to something good.

You've heard the story, right? Free will in the hands of angels _does_ something to them. They start acting vicious and jealous, start thinking less about God's will and more about their own wants.

They start acting like humans.

That's the first hint he gets. He _wants_.

It's Derek that he wants and it's just a simple stray thought but it's there and it won't leave. He wonders what it'll be like to press his lips to the demon's. He watches as Derek takes another soul for his own and throws a wink over at where he somehow knew Stiles is watching from and he _wants_.

It's a hot feeling in his stomach and he wonders if he had veins with blood to fill them, would his cheeks turn red at the sight of the beautiful ex-werewolf kissing the man who stands shakily at a crossroad?

If Derek was still alive, would his heart beat faster when Stiles arrived?

So yeah, Death was right; angels and free will cause problems.

* * *

It's a terrible thought, one he's had more than once lately, and as he stands next to Lydia he has to bite his lip hard to stop himself from saying it aloud.

_I don't like this, I don't like this, I don't want to be here._

They're here for a murder-suicide and his eyes refuse to close as this man's girlfriend begs for her life, her destiny fading in front of his eyes. He clenches his jaw minutely at the sound of the gun going off and Lydia raises an eyebrow at him as she steps forward because she gets the easy one. She gets the good person who gets to go to heaven where she'll be reunited with her mother who died of cancer when she was twelve. Stiles gets the man with the misogynistic views who'll be lorded as a victim of mental illness even though he's not mentally ill, just sick.

He's a terrible person and Stiles feels hate for the first time ever.

He used to feel nothing.

“Is she dead?”

Stiles turns away from the now soul-less bodies, turns away from the vision of violence the girl's father will come home to after a nine hour shift.

(There's a way of being able to tell whose soul is going which direction if you're not a reaper like him or a demon like Derek. The innocent ones come out clean, their souls shine with their own pureness, their own light and it's beautiful. He can understand why God keeps creating more of them if they start out this way.

The world needs more of the beautiful souls he keeps needing to ferry away from this terrible world.

The people who end up in Hell, the people who committed those crimes worthy of eternal torture, they just look wrecked. They look as bad as their souls are.)

He looks at the man behind him, takes in his sunken face and the darkness in his heart and he _hates_. He hates, he hates, he hates. “Yes.” And his voice is cold. “You killed her.”

“She cheated on me.”

He shakes his head, “No. She didn't.” He takes a step forward, pointing an angry finger at Allison Argent's crumpled body. “She was eighteen and she had friends and a cousin in France she just promised to visit. She was meant to have a very long life and she did not cheat on you.”

The soul looks at him, eyes wide, “But–”

“No.” He spits. “There's no _buts_. You committed murder and then you committed suicide. You're going to Hell. Are you ready?”

* * *

Stiles has never met God.

Stiles answers to somebody who barely answers to another somebody on a good day and it's very convoluted, the politics of faith. It's why he doesn't like to comment on religion unless it's to laugh with Lydia about it because religion is even worse, believe it or not.

Death has been around since the beginning of time. Death has been around longer than anything and everything and so the reapers have been around longer than most. The more people God decided to make, the more reapers were needed and so Stiles has many brothers and sisters who do the same job he does. Still. He's one of the first. He remembers the druids and Egyptians and the people who had many gods they prayed to but still needed somebody to take their souls after they'd died.

Death had been getting credit a lot longer than God.

That was before Hell, before demons and deals and everything was so much easier then.

He misses it, he tells Death.

He misses the simpleness of life because he can't stand the _poison_ done in the name of the Lord. He can't stand the faith God himself has in the humans who believe in child marriages and that women who are raped must be murdered in the name of honor. He can't bear how many children are committing suicide, are being killed in the street by people who are supposed to protect them because of the colour of their skin and can't they see that it's their _souls_ that really matter?

I understand why Lucifer fell, he whispers brokenly to the being who created him. The being who taught him to ferry souls, to be impartial and unbiased.

Death is silent for a very long time before Stiles feels hands on his shoulders.

His creator says nothing but then again, his creator only seems to speak in times of great distress, when orders must be given.

Death is always apathetic to the pain of human life because it's fleeting and meaningless and in the great span of things, of all the many creatures on the many planets in the many universes, a single life is nothing.

This is the lesson Stiles was taught.

This is the lesson Stiles does not agree with.

Each life is deserving of celebration. Each death is deserving of mourning.

His creator, who he secretly loves above even his Lord himself, says nothing. Stiles feels peace anyway.

* * *

There's a hand on the back of his neck, anchoring him. He rests his head against the chest of the demon in front of him and doesn't question how he knows exactly who it is when all demons are supposed to feel the same to him. Derek has never quite felt like the poison and lies other demons excrete with every step.

Derek feels like his own broken promise to Laura, like the weight of thousands of years worth of responsibility feels heavy on his shoulders. Only, Derek's uncomplicated, unconditional trust is it's own weight. It's heavy and crushing and he can't breathe properly when he thinks of it because it isn't meant to be like this, is it?

“Come on.” The demon urges, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “I'll catch you.”

Derek feels like hope.

Stiles closes his eyes.

He falls.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this contains descriptions of:
> 
> child marriages, domestic violence & murder caused by a domestic partner, suicide, death of a child (suicide).
> 
> i'm pretty sure that's it.
> 
> come and [ visit me ](http://clintssecretfamily.tumblr.com/)


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